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New Mac Pro Tech Specs

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Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#431

Post by ryanlol »

volkl48 wrote: post #386
dahauns wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>-Has a corporate warranty Has Apple finally started to offer one comparable to the Big Three? (SLAs, Onsite service with guaranteed reaction times and HW replacements and so on) Serious question - this was actually a big argument against Pro Apple workstations in the past. >-Ships with anything other than Windows Well, you won't get macOS of course, but all big workstation manufacturers sell workstations with Linux…

In at least some cases, yes. https://support.apple.com/applecare-enterprise-service I do not know what the criteria are to be able to get on that program, though.

Not really comparable if it's only US and Canada.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#432

Post by wlesieutre »

overcast wrote: post #418
wlesieutre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the home users who were buying $3000 base model cheese grater Mac Pros could get by now with a 6-core i7 Mac Mini. Price would be around $1300 for the computer, $300 for an eGPU enclosure, and $700ish for a Radeon R7, plus aftermarket RAM. AMD's not in a great spot for high end GPUs right now, but when the Navi 23 cards land next year it will be looking better. This doesn't scale as well for multi GPU machine…

You could sure, but people buying the MacPros bought them because they wanted modular. A glorified laptop attached to a giant monitor isn't an option.

My Windows machine is admittedly more modular than a mini+eGPU would be. I can pull the CPU out and put in a new one whenever I want! But over the course of 12 years and 3 computer builds, I've never done that once. By the time there's a noticeable CPU upgrade available I'd need a new motherboard to go with it.

So I think there's a big segment of the "modular" market that only really cares about having GPU options and upgradeable RAM.

It's not for everyone, but the people in between the high end Mac Mini (6-core i7 + thunderbolt GPU) and the low end Mac Pro (8-core Xeon W and internal expansion slots) are a small enough slice that Apple doesn't care.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#433

Post by 29_29 »

dewey wrote: post #146
jaequery wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like any slight mention of negativity towards Apple are being downvoted. The force is strong with this one.

No, it's not that. It's that you are posting about some unrelated gripe with another product line that's off-topic in this Mac Pro thread. As for the other comments complaining about downvoting, it's discouraged in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I still think we should try to be nice. At a minimum. She got downvoted again? Let's try to be more welcoming.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#434

Post by Macha »

jchw wrote: post #96
lliamander wrote: post #49

Slightly off-topic, but who here uses a HEDT (high-end desktop) or workstation computer for software development? Does it make a significant difference in comparison with a standard business laptop?

I just upgraded from a 2700X to a 3900X. Maybe it’s not quite HEDT but its closer, and my god, it’s literally mind blowing. I measured a 47% wall clock improvement on a test compilation. If you compile lots of C++ you are in for some serious surprises. Especially so if you are doing things that cross-cut hundreds of C++ packages at once, it basically enables things that aren’t possible on, say, a mid range laptop. Th…

Rust actually benefits a lot from more threads once you have a couple of dependencies. A personal project using amethyst/nalgebra dropped its compile time for a fresh release build from 20 minutes to 2 when I upgraded from a i5-4670k to a r9 3900x.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#435

Post by Crinus »

_bxg1 wrote: post #115
kbumsik wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an HEDT but an outdated Haswell i5 laptop (not an Ultra Low Voltage model at least, so it's quite fast). Last year I spotted a bug in Firefox and I though it was time to put a line in the contribution section in my resume. The contribution experience was a nightmare because a full build of Firefox took 3 hrs and running the entire testing framework took 4 hrs, though it turned out that I needed to run on…

Woof. I wasn't aware compilation times got that long for people who aren't building a whole OS.

I remember building Mozilla took around 6 hours in my PC back around 2003. Though granted, that was a Pentium II PC with only 128MB of RAM and most of those hours were probably spent with the OS (Linux) swapping stuff :-P.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#436

Post by _ph_ »

aldanor wrote: post #420
_ph_ wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal storage is a huge thing. I have external storage attached to my 27" iMac, but it is not completely reliable (disks get ejected occasionally) and completely beats the purpose of an elegant desktop machine. So I really would like a machine with several drive spaces, especially if I can access them. I could have lived reasonably by upgrading the internal storage of my iMac, if there was any way for me to access…

Disagreed. I've had BlackMagic 1U SSD rack with a few drives connected to my 2013 iMac 27'' via Thunderbolt since like... 2013, and not a single time did they disconnect. It just works. The rack is under the table so it doesn't "beat the purpose of an elegant desktop machine" either.

Lucky for you that you had no disconnects. But getting those limits which files you can put on the external disk if you need them available all the time. E.g. when my external disk gets disconnected, EyeTV stops working as its work directory is no longer existant. Also, I don't see how having an additional large box (which by itself costs as much as many PCs) doesn't defeat the purpose of an all-in-one machine.

I am not arguing that the iMac shouldn't exist, I just listed a few points which can be better addressed with a proper desktop machine. Why I would be willing to spend quite a bit of money for that convenience.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#437

Post by _ph_ »

acdha wrote: post #423
_ph_ wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware is brand new and the cabling properly secured. I had this with USB disks too.

Maybe check your power supply? I've supported Macs for a couple of decades and normally people have storage mounted for years without this kind of thing happening in the absence of some sort of hardware or environmental problem.

I wouldn't know what to check my power supply for and how I would go forward with that in an iMac. And this phenomenum isn't limited to the iMac, my Mac Mini had the same problem. Across different disks and interfaces. The disconnects are not constant, but an irregular thing. A colleague occasionally has the same problem, he even managed to get a local disk image unmounted when waking from sleep. So it might just be a MacOS problem.

With Thunderbolt3, there are more solutions for external storage, but still I find it odd consindering the price, that you don't get a desktop Mac where you can plug in some NVM SSDs or you get at least a few 2.5 inch bays.

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#438

Post by Silhouette »

newherehi wrote: post #419
Silhouette wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, we experimented with a Dell XPS 13 laptop that had a succession of problems, and the service was the worst I have ever encountered in IT, taking several months of elapsed time before we finally got an on-site visit from someone who knew what they were doing (who then fixed the laptop in under an hour). That was what "next day" level support actually looked like in our case. We were attracted to these as t…

Interesting. I've never had an issue with getting a next day tech to our office from Dell.

I think we just got stuck in endless loops of tier 1 support people trying to run through checklists over the phone and then again via email. It was essentially the business class version of "Have you tried switching it off and on again?" repeated seemingly endlessly, bouncing from one support tech to another. Clearly several of the techs didn't even understand that they also sold these laptops with Linux on them and that's what we had.

Eventually, literally months later, someone finally seemed to escalate it to a person with the authority to send out a technician, who as mentioned before then fixed the actual problem in barely any time at all. We were on the point of just writing off the machine by then, as the amount of time we were wasting dealing with Dell was in danger of costing more than just buying a new box, and at least we would been reasonably confident of having a working system the next day in that case!

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#439

Post by xenospn »

nsxwolf wrote: post #426
maccard wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple service is atrocious. Don't they make you book an appointment and turn up at their store just to get someone to look at it? I had a macbook pro with a logic board that died. I phoned Apple, they couriered me a replacement device next day, and that courier picked up my old device. Literally couldn't ask for better service.

Seriously? My friend was forced to drag his 27 inch iMac into the Woodfield shopping mall location, which if you've ever been there, is a quarter mile minimum walk from the parking lot to the store.

He probably chose to do that. You can't force someone to physically appear in your store. What if they're disabled?

Re: New Mac Pro Tech Specs

#440

Post by bgentry »

maaaats wrote: post #242
bgentry wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your Lenovo laptop has an 8 core 3.2GHz Xeon with 4.2GHz Turbo Boost, 19MB Cache, 64GB DDR4, silent cooling even under heavy load (which it can sustain), and an SSD that does 1700MB/s with full disk encryption?

Not at my laptop until monday so not sure about all details, but almost that, yes. It's a top specced P1. Xeon but 6 cores I think. 64gb ddr4. 1500mb/s read I think it was on the SSD. Not silent, exactly though, hehe.

Wow, that’s a beast of a laptop. I just configured one and the cost isn’t all that different from my 18mo old iMac Pro :) I have to imagine that the battery life isn’t great given the non-mobile parts, and that it must weigh a ton?

I’m enjoying the combo of a powerful workstation where I work most of the time, and then a thin & light portable device for when I need portability. For me that combo works well and hits the right trade offs, especially the silence I get to enjoy.

I’m also remembering that Apple ships the same SSD setup in the newer MacBook Pro machines, which weren’t yet out when I bought this iMac Pro. Definitely nothing unique or unusual about that speed anymore!

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